"Not right away," I insist. "If he sees a Bratva soldier in black, yeah, he'll unload every bullet he has and then some. But me? Nah. He'll want to figure out what the hell this crazy bride is doing walking up his road in a wedding dress."
Lukas stares at me for a long, long moment.
"You'd put yourself in front of his guns," he says, "on purpose."
"He's not going to shoot me. I just told you why."
"You don't know that."
"No," I admit. "I don't. But I know that if I'm sitting safe in a car six miles back while Afon walks into that camp to die, I'm going to spend the rest of my life knowing I had a play and I didn't run it."
I meet his eyes, no longer afraid.
Nobody says anything.
Then a new voice rings out from the doorway.
"She's right."
I turn. Cass is standing there, and behind her, Rae and Jillian. All three of them are in regular clothes, hair pulled back, faces hard. Cass's eyes find mine and she nods in approval.
"My husband's up that mountain," Cass declares, striding in uninvited. "So whatever you're doing, I'm in it, too. Don't even think about telling me to stay home."
"Cassandra…" Lukas starts.
She comes to stand beside me at the table. Up close, I can see her hands are shaking, same as mine. She rests one of them on my elbow. "Caroline has a real plan, and you know it's a good one. I can see it on your face."
Lukas looks at the three of them. Then at me. Then down at the map, at the camp and the lodge and the road and the woods behind it.
"It's reckless," he says.
"Everything about the last three weeks has been reckless," I say. "I got concussed, kidnapped, shot at, and proposed to by a manwho then ran off to die rather than say the words to my face. Reckless is the water I'm swimming in now."
He sighs and scrubs at his beard. "You sound like Afon," he murmurs. "Never once in thirty years did he let me talk him out of a thing once he'd decided it was the right thing."
"So that's a yes?"
"That's awe'll see." He turns to Kir. "Get me that drone. I want to know how many men are at that lodge before anyone goes anywhere near it. Get teams staged on the back approach, through the tree line. Quiet. No engines past the ridge." He points at the scarred-eyebrow man. "Decoy vehicles for the front."
The room comes alive again, faster this time, harder, more frenetic than ever.
Jillian comes to me holding a bulletproof vest. "Arms up," she instructs. "Your boobs are gonna get smushed into pancakes in this thing, but at least you'll be alive to complain about it."
Laughing like a deranged woman, I lift my arms. She straps the vest over the ivory silk, cinching it tight, and Rae steps in to help with the side buckles.
"I can't breathe," I wheeze when they're done.
Rae pats my shoulder. "That's how you know it's on right."
When it's done, I shrug the big black coat back on over all of it. The vest, the dress, the whole insane costume. I shove my hands in the pockets and find the granola bar wrapper where I tucked it. Afon's ring is on my right thumb.
I look down the length of that table. Maps and phones and guns and grief, all of it turned now into one clean line pointing north.
"Okay," I say. To the room. To Lukas. To myself. "Let's go get my husband."
Lukas picks up his coat off the back of his chair. He steps into it slow, but his eyes are bright and hard, and for the first time, I understand what Afon must have seen in this man for thirty years.
"Convoy in five," Lukas says. "Kir, eyes up first. Nobody crosses that ridge until the drone's clean." He looks at the four of us women standing there in our half-armor. "A war and a wedding," he says in disbelief. "Afon would have loved this. Let's go bring the stubborn bastard home, shall we?"
